by Kat Ross
“What’s going on here?” It was Mrs. Temple Kane. She had her son’s green eyes and blonde hair, but the resemblance ended there. Temple’s face was all hard planes and angles. She towered over me, and I guessed her height must have been close to six feet.
George opened his mouth but no sound came out.
“Get back inside,” she said to her son in a peremptory tone.
He scrambled to his feet and grabbed the champagne.
“Mother—”
“Just do as I say.”
George couldn’t meet her gaze. “Yes, Mother.”
He turned and stumbled down the path like a whipped dog. Mrs. Kane turned to me.
“You look tired, Miss Pell. It’s been a long evening. I’m sure you wish to go home now.”
I was being dismissed as surely as George, if in a somewhat more polite manner.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Kane,” I said. “It was certainly an exciting party.”
She smiled, and it was one of the most frightening things I’ve ever seen.
“I’m so glad you thought so. Shall I fetch Mr. Weston to escort you to your carriage?”
“I can do it myself.”
She inclined her head. “So independent. I suppose it runs in the family. Good evening, then, Miss Pell.”
She swept up her skirts and glided away down the path.
I stood there for a moment. George had said something that tickled the back of my mind, like a maddening itch I couldn’t quite reach. He’d been in Becky’s flat, all right, and retrieved the book. But had he been the one to kill her? As John had noted, he could be a fluent liar. He certainly didn’t seem to feel any remorse for using Becky to carry out his dirty work.
Was it true fear I saw in his eyes at the end, or simply a calculated performance?
I went back inside. John was dancing with Parthena, who clung to him like a leech. Edward had disappeared. Mrs. Kane’s eyes bored into me as I crossed the ballroom, as though she could shove me out the front door through sheer force of will.
So I snagged two cherry tarts from the groaning food table and brought them out to the long line of carriages waiting at the curb. Most of the drivers were dozing in their seats. A few stood on the street, talking quietly. The mansion itself occupied the middle of the block, with a high wrought-iron fence extending around the grounds. I headed north, searching for Connor. When I reached the corner of Sixty-Seventh Street, I happened to glance back.
A slender figure lounged against the fence, smoking a cigarette. Something about the profile was wrong, distorted, like a reflection in moving water. I froze. It was Thomas Sweet. He seemed to feel my eyes on him, because he turned and grinned. Then he flicked his cigarette into the gutter and slipped through a gate into the gardens.
I watched for another minute, but he seemed to have vanished. A hound gone to heel at his master’s side.
I walked quickly up the line of carriages and finally found Connor at Seventy-First Street. His eyes lit up when he saw the tarts.
“Where’s the others?” he mumbled through a mouthful of crust.
“Still inside. Listen, Connor, we’ll fetch them in a bit. I just need to walk, do some thinking.”
“Keep out of the park,” he warned.
“Naturally. I’ll be back soon.”
“Sure you don’t want some company?” he asked.
“Thanks, but you’d best stay here.”
I left him happily inflicting cherry stains on his new clothes and set off up Fifth Avenue. By Seventy-Fifth Street, the traffic had thinned. It was a perfect mid-August night. Insects chirped in the trees to my right, where the dark mass of Central Park sat behind a low stone wall.
I reviewed the facts of the case as we now knew them.
George Kane acquires The Black Pullet but he’s afraid to use it himself, so he gives it to his lover, Becky Rickard, along with $200 to perform the ritual. He knows she is desperate enough to accept, and indeed she does, justifying it to herself after consulting “the Spirits,” which she still believes in despite the Fox sisters’ fraud.
Becky recruits Robert Straker, who in turn recruits his old friend Leland Brady. For some unknown reason, she scatters sulphur on the floor of the cellar. Perhaps it is part of the ritual. Things do not go as planned, but we know that Becky is still alive after Straker and Brady leave, since she went to the owner of the building to compensate her for the mess they made.
Becky then returns to her flat, where someone comes and brutally murders her. It was someone she knew well, since she would never have opened the door in the middle of the night to a stranger. The $200 is still there, but The Black Pullet is not found among her belongings. Despite the savagery of the crime, the killer appears remorseful afterwards.
I say appears because if we are indeed dealing with a habitual and practiced liar, the scene could easily have been staged to create a particular impression aimed at throwing off the investigation.
Straker disappears the next day, after Brady reports that he acted deranged. But he leaves the only picture of his beloved mother hidden under his mattress, and cigarette ash indicates the presence of a second person in the room. His soldier’s uniform is missing, and both the button found next to Raffaele’s body and Mary Fletcher’s account indicate that the killer dresses as a soldier. However, we have no proof that it’s Straker’s uniform.
The same day Straker disappears, Raffaele Forsizi is lured or abducted from the Third Avenue Elevated and strangled in Washington Square Park. A so-called “diabolical signature” is burned into the grass next to his body, heightening the impression that the killer is obsessed with the occult, or believes themselves possessed. This is confirmed with the death of Anne Marlowe, where another taunting message in backwards Latin is left painted on the wall in blood.
Two days later, the killer strikes again. It becomes clear he is using the elevated lines to stalk his victims, a pair this time, just hours apart. The single consistent act is to cover the faces of the dead.
That was yesterday. My steps slowed as I mulled it all over. A carriage moved past, curtains drawn tight, the clop-clop of the horses’ hooves and soft creaking of the harness the only sounds in the still night. It was evident that the person we were dealing with was very sophisticated. Highly organized. He had managed to kill Raffaele in a relatively crowded place without being seen. He had enticed Anne Marlowe to a deserted location. He had a firm working knowledge of arcane practices, such as pacts with the Devil and the supposed dangers of using a grimoire like The Black Pullet to conjure wealth.
I didn’t doubt that he was a lunatic. But the later victims struck me almost as afterthoughts. Part of a game that was proving too enjoyable to quit.
It all started with Becky.
I was just turning to go back to the Kane mansion when a faint but agonized scream cut through the summer night. It came from somewhere deep inside the park.
Chapter 15
The scream hung in the air, then stopped abruptly. As though the person’s air supply had been suddenly cut off.
I looked up and down the street, but there was no one else in sight. The carriage had vanished, turning the corner perhaps. Never was I so glad to have followed Myrtle’s advice. I rummaged around in my bodice and retrieved the pistol. The grip was slippery with perspiration, but its metallic weight was reassuring in my hand as I took a deep breath and entered Central Park at the Seventy-Ninth Street transverse.
I ran down the winding road, trying not to trip over my skirts. I had been to the park many times with John and his brothers, but always during the daytime. We would bring a picnic lunch and they would play rugby on a large lawn called the Green, while I read a book or just lay on my back watching the clouds. I knew the Green was a bit to the south near a ladies’ restaurant called the Casino. I was less familiar with this area.
Newly installed electric lamps illuminated a fork in the road. I caught a glimpse of the lake through the trees to my left, not the wate
r itself but the red and blue lights of the hired pleasure boats. We skated there last winter, John, Connor and I, before the blizzard. When the ice was frozen solid, all the omnibuses and horse cars would fly white flags and word would spread that “the ball is up in the park!”—meaning the red ball had been hoisted on the Arsenal and it was safe to skate.
Connor wasn’t living with us yet, but John had taken an immediate fancy to him. I think he enjoyed showing Connor new things, things he couldn’t even have dreamt of before he tried to rob Myrtle and ended up getting a job instead. I smiled at the memory. A frosty January morning, just after New Year’s. The sky was a lustrous, bottomless blue. We’d gone to one of the nearby cottages afterwards and sipped hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire. John told a ghost story, something about the restless souls of smallpox patients haunting the Gothic-style hospital on Ward’s Island after its closure two years ago…
All was silent. I began to wonder if what I thought was a scream had actually been wild laughter.
I paused at the entrance to a heavily wooded area that could only be the Ramble. In the sunlight, it was reputed to be one of the most beautiful parts of the park, a rustic paradise of gurgling brooks and wildflowers. Tonight, it just looked dark and impenetrable.
“Hello?” I called, feeling idiotic. “Does anyone need help?”
Not even a cricket replied.
I was turning to leave when I heard a noise. It had a wet, squelching quality that made my skin crawl. With very little effort, my mind conjured up the image of a deer carcass being dressed with a sharp knife.
I switched the pistol to my left hand and wiped the sweat off my right palm. Then I returned the pistol to my right and cocked it.
“You really are a fool, Harry,” I muttered.
I began to walk cautiously deeper into the Ramble. Trees laden with vines pressed close on both sides. The lights of the main thoroughfare faded behind me. I tried to be stealthy, but my dress rustled like a pile of autumn leaves with every step. Then the breeze died, leaving an airless void. Stinging beads of sweat popped out on my forehead and rolled into my eyes.
It was so dark that I tripped over the body.
All I knew was that my left foot caught on something in the middle of the path. I pinwheeled my arms and tried to recover, but when I looked down and saw the white flash of skin gleaming in the moonlight, I let out a shriek and went arse over teakettle, as Connor would say, into the undergrowth. The pistol flew from my hand.
I lay there, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come. My chest felt like a locked door with no key. My eyes still worked though. And what I saw lifted all the hair on my body straight up.
A rough stone wall crossed the path ten paces away. It was broken by a narrow archway, through which the night poured black as pitch. But something even darker stood just within the shadow of the arch. Watching me.
I groped for the pistol but my hands came away empty. Empty and wet.
I was lying in a pool of blood.
The whole scene was so surreal, my mind simply rejected it. This couldn’t be happening. Not an hour ago I was dancing with John in a brightly lit ballroom filled with people. Maybe not the nicest people, but still, regular people.
How easy it is in New York City to tumble down the rabbit hole. It just takes a few wrong steps. One or two poor decisions. The abyss is always waiting for the unwary. A hidden signal, and the trapdoor suddenly opens beneath your feet, dropping you into a lightless pit, a charnel house like the one in the Benders’ cellar.
A beam of moonlight caught the glint of metal in the archway. Just a glimmer, but it was at about the height where you’d expect to see a knife if a person held it dangling point-down at their side.
I watched, breath still trapped in my throat like a wild animal clawing to get out, as the blade moved gently back and forth. A grotesque waggling gesture. Like some demented children’s rhyme.
Round and round the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel
The monkey thought it was all in fun…
My fingers scrabbled frantically through the dirt.
The blackness within the archway looked bottomless, infinite, like a hole torn in the fabric of the universe. The words Mrs. Rivers uttered at the séance, in that horrible chorus of overlapping voices, came back to me:
Abyssus abyssum invocat
Deep calls to deep
The figure shifted, moving slowly into the moonlight. I saw a pale hand, and a knife as long as my forearm, mottled heavily with some dark substance. The glint of a brass button at the cuff.
I clenched my teeth and drew a ragged stream of air into my lungs. It wasn’t enough.
You’re going to die here, Harry, I thought dimly. And the killings will just go on and on and on…
And then a small person leapt into the clearing, a horsewhip in his hand and fire in his eyes.
He bent over me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me up to a sitting position. I felt my chest release and the sweet night air of the Ramble pour inside.
“You all right?” Connor asked.
“I think so. Just got my breath knocked out.” I turned fearfully back toward the archway but whoever had been there was gone. Then we heard a soft moan from the figure that lay sprawled across the path. “My God, I think they’re still alive,” I said.
I knelt over the body. It was a woman. Her eyelids fluttered and she moaned again. I found her hand and squeezed it.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered. “They’re gone. We’ll get help.”
I turned to Connor and realized our predicament. We couldn’t leave her alone, but neither could just one of us stay. Whoever had attacked her might not have gone far.
“We’ll have to carry her,” I decided. “Although without knowing the extent of her injuries, I’m afraid—”
Salvation came in the form of a giggle, followed by a resounding slap, in one of the nearby thickets.
“Oh you devil!” A voice declared.
“But Lucy—”
“Help!” I cried. “Over here! A woman’s been stabbed!”
There was silence, and then a young couple appeared, both slightly dishevelled but more than willing to come to our aid. They ran off as soon as I told them what had happened and returned minutes later with two burly policemen who had been stationed near the Boathouse.
I’d managed to find my pistol under a bush and was stuffing it back into my bodice as they came charging up the path. One had a lantern and we examined the poor woman, who was either extremely unlucky or extremely lucky, depending on how you looked at it. She was a ragpicker, as evidenced by the overladen cart parked to the side of the path. I guessed she had been sleeping in the park when she was assaulted.
I ripped several strips of cloth from my gown and one of the policemen, a man named O’Reilly, made a makeshift tourniquet while we waited for the ambulance. She’d been slashed in a dozen places and was bleeding heavily, but it seemed I’d interrupted the attack before any vital organs had been ruptured.
“Where are you taking her?” I asked as the Night Service carriage arrived.
“Bellevue, of course,” O’Reilly said.
“But that’s all the way downtown! She needs help immediately. Mount Sinai is just on the other side of the park.”
The patrolman gave me a weary look. “Bellevue’s the place that caters to her sort,” he said.
“Take her to Sinai,” I said firmly. “I’ll pay the bill.”
He looked me over and seemed to decide that I could afford it. I’d already given them my statement, including name and address. I’d told essentially the truth: that I was at the Kanes’ party and had gone outside for some air. I heard a scream and entered the park, literally stumbling across her body. My driver had followed me, concerned about my safety so late at night. He startled the attacker, who ran off into the trees.
A manhunt had already commenced, although considering the park’s vast size—eight-hundred and for
ty-three acres, with countless exits—I thought it unlikely the search would bear fruit.
“As you say, Miss Pell. Take her to Mount Sinai, boys!” he called to the white-coated attendants.
They nodded and gently lifted the woman onto a stretcher.
“You think she can identify him?” Connor asked, as the night ambulance drove away.
“I don’t know. It was awfully dark.” I shuddered. “I only got a glimpse of the knife. It was huge, Connor. If you hadn’t come along…”
“That’s twice I’ve pulled your fat from the fire,” he said.
I gave him two kisses, one on each cheek. “My hero,” I said lightly. “At this rate, we’ll be engaged before Christmas.”
Connor blushed.
“I don’t suppose you saw anyone else leave the party?” I asked.
“No, but I was too busy trying to keep out of sight. I hopped over the wall and trailed you from inside the park. Bet you didn’t hear a thing,” he said proudly.
“I had no clue. Thank God you did.”
We started walking back to Fifth Avenue. Groups of patrolmen moved through the trees, lanterns bobbing like huge fireflies. Central Park was the crown jewel of the city, and the authorities wouldn’t take such a brazen crime lightly.
Connor fell silent, and I again went over everything George had said in the garden. I’d been on the verge of understanding something crucial when I’d been distracted by the scream. I felt sure that what nagged at me was a word, a single word.
George’s demeanor had changed like quicksilver, shifting from self-pity to cold fury and then rambling paranoia in a matter of seconds. I wondered if his mother knew everything. Was she protecting him somehow? It must be a terrible disappointment for a woman like Temple Kane to have a son like George. I wondered who had hired Thomas Sweet. Maybe it wasn’t George after all.
I keep seeing things…
In the mirror.
I stopped walking.
What a fool I’d been. A blind, blind fool.
